Dear Friends,
We are happy to share with you our EVS Project The Gate to Europe’s June Report organised with Foundation for Creative Space and Development CampoSfera that takes place in Poland with 2 volunteer (Talar U. and Yiğit Y.).
The project with the first volunteer arriving to Klimontów on 11th of June and the last one who join us on the 22th of June. First of all, volunteers were introduced to the three volunteers that are in CampoSfera since March. Later on they were invited for the introduction session, during which they were familiarized with the values and principals of the organization, it’s history, all team members as well as objectives and plan for „The Gate to Europe” project.
They went through the orientation session, they were walked through organization’s premises, introduced to the neighbors, village and it’s most important points, nearest towns and must-know places like pharmacy, post office, ATM, train station etc. Volunteers went through in-depth session on why they have decided to volunteer, what they would like to achieve during the 5 months they are going to spend in Poland and how they would like their EVS to look like. At the same time volunteers were registered as temporary residents in the municipality and they received confirmation of their temporary address. All of them have opened polish bank account and they received the first money transaction, as described in the Activity Agreement.
As for the tasks conducted this month, volunteers started with getting involved in all the duties related to the household and premises of the organization. As an organization that aims at self-sufficiency, we pay a lot of attention on independent food production. In practical terms it means that volunteers have learned, for example, how to bake yeast bread, how to make cheese and yoghurt for the milk we are buying for the immediate neighbour, how to cook with seasonal and regional products and with limited meat products.
Volunteers join already present group of volunteers in some intellectual work that consist of planning Play Day session (two hours long meeting with local kids. Play Day normally consists of games and manual workshops). They have created scenarios for few Play Days and conducted them. All volunteers quickly established good relations with kids and youngsters that attend the Play Day. In total this month new volunteers cooperated in preparing and organizing 3 Play Days and 2 sport classes. The first volunteer who arrived this month also had a chance to join for two workshops on tolerance that were created from scratches by the volunteers from the project that started in March. Both schools and teachers were satisfied with workshops prepared by the volunteers and expressed interest in further cooperation with CampoSfera.
This month volunteers went to the certified eco-farm where they helped out on this family farm. It was a visit very rich in information on eco standards, change happening on the Polish countryside and in food production sector and last but not least in interactions with very loving and kind family. Another one of a kind event this month was a visit of a group of representatives of NGO and local level politicians from several regions of Poland. The group visited CampoSfera and was presented with our actions, in particular Erasmus+ projects, as an example of good practices. Later on our guests together with volunteers went to the local community building were all group was hosted by ladies form the village who sang the songs and prepared traditional food.
Moreover volunteers, especially those who follow Mundial matches, built relations with young habitants of a nearby city where they were going to watch football. The effort they put into relations with locals is impressive and brings good results.
As for challenges of this month, in the first week of his stay in Klimontów, one of the volunteer felt down from the bicycle and had hit hard his shoulder. In order to check if everything is good and no harm was done we went to the hospital and went through few check-ups. It turn out that no lasting damage was dome and after few weeks of rest the arm should be fully functioning.
Here are some pictures from the activities; (more can be found on our instagram page: youthorgtr)
